Legio Fureans
The Legio Fureans ("Tiger Eyes") is a Traitor Titan Legion of the Dark Mechanicum that repudiated its oaths to the Emperor of Mankind and followed the Warmaster Horus into the service of the Ruinous Powers during the Horus Heresy. The Legio Fureans was a Titan Legion with a well-earned reputation for ferocity and unpredictability, nevertheless they amassed a war record of the highest distinction in the battles of the Great Crusade. It was this triumphant history and many martial plaudits that caused the more disquieting rumours that surrounded the Legio and its practices to be overlooked and ignored. Many of these unpursued reports pointed to occult and shamanistic beliefs held by the Legio 's members which, if accurately portrayed, would be contrary to both the Imperial Truth and the orthodoxy of the Machine Cult of Mars. With the clarity of hindsight, it can now be judged just what corruption such hidden rites and twisted mores left the Legio Fureans open to, and what darkness had always festered in its heart. At the end of the Heresy during the Great Scouring, the Tiger Eyes Legion was driven towards the Eye of Terror along with the rest of the Forces of Chaos. There they remained, trapped in eternal servitude to the Chaos Gods, fighting the Long War against the Corpse Emperor that began ten millennia ago. Legion History ]] The Legio Fureans owed its genesis and its destiny to the Forge World of Incaladion and the unceasing cycle of war, strife and invasion that had wracked it before it was liberated by the forces of the Great Crusade. Founded by a Mechanicum Sleeper-Ark during the Age of Strife on a world rich with an abundance of rare mineral resources as well as the necessary organic compounds for sustaining a biosphere, Incaladion ought to have offered a perfect locale to found a Forge World. But the same stable Warp-currents that had succeeded in carrying the Mechanicum colonists to the world were, as time progressed, to bring a host of less-welcome voyagers. Records of its founding centuries remain fragmentary, but it seems certain that alongside the vast works of macro-construction and geo-forming the Mechanicum colonists undertook, conflict and battle were nearly constant against a host of invaders. As a result, the Incaladion Mechanicum, separated by vast distance from Mars, evolved into a distinctive and highly warlike faction, and one that was seldom united as individual forge-fanes often had to look to their own defence and survival unaided. Waves of xenos invasion spurred unusual avenues of technological development and the creation of vast fortified cities which dominated and defended the richest mineral seams and algae-rich seas, while hidden forge-fanes were sunk kilometres beneath the planet's crust. The Incaladine also adapted to the need to acquire additional human stock by raiding the feral populations of the world, which brought echoes of barbarous and macabre cultures that began to infect the increasingly schismatic Machine Cult propagated by the Incaladine Mechanicum. Throughout this long and savage history, the Legio Fureans formed the principal military force of Incaladion's ruling Archmagos, known as the Preceptor-General. Its Titans served as the avatar of her will. No resource was spared in the Titan Legion's maintenance, and where possible due to lulls in the conflicts, the expansion of its fighting strength. Their more common cognomen the "Tiger Eyes" also stemmed from this early period as a corruption of the name given to them by the feral tribes of the nearby world of Humardu, to whom the Titans truly were divine and terrible beings come to reap a sacrifice of the young and the strong to serve in the palace of the gods. Unlike some garrisoning Titan Legions before the Great Crusade, the Legio Fureans did not stand vigil as enforcers for petty empires of the Machine God's servants, but rather fought an unceasing war against a host of foes. For centuries the Legio Fureans unleashed their wrath against invading hordes of Ork marauders and the spiteful raids of Yldari corsairs, scavenging Tarellian war-packs and the colossal viscid horrors of meteor-brought Carnoplasm infestations from the Abyssal Reefs. Such ceaseless conflicts took their toll, however, both on Incaladion itself and the Legio Fureans who defended it. Around fifty standard years before the Great Crusade would finally reach Incaladion, after a particularly brutal series of incursions and raids, the Taghmata Omnissium -- the feudal order upon which the defence and military hierarchy of a Forge World of the Mechanicum is based -- finally broke down. In the ensuing strife, the Preceptor-General of Incaladion was assassinated and the Forge World split into warring or isolationist factions, bereft of central control or co-ordination, laying it open to invasion and the devastation which followed. By the time the Great Crusade's advance elements reached Incaladion, it was a global battleground, disputed by a dozen different armies; Mechanicum, Renegade and xenos unleashing atomic fire and yet more savage weapons upon each other. During this time, overwhelmed and vastly outnumbered, the Tiger Eyes refused to retreat or retrench, and shattered its blade on foes uncounted until it became only a shadow of its former might, reduced to defending the last forge-fane of its dead regent. After Imperial contact, Mars was determined to bring Incaladion into the fold of the Imperium, but the Great Crusade was as that time engaged in major battles on a myriad of fronts and much of the Mechanicum's military forces were tied up in on-going campaigns. It instead fell to the forces of the IV Legion (not then yet having taken the name of the Iron Warriors) to bear the brunt of the liberation campaign, with such supporting elements of the Legio Mortis and Martian Skitarii and Secutarii forces as could be spared to aid it. The resulting campaign was to prove the bloodiest in the IV Legion's history to that point, but after two Terran years of guerrilla warfare, Incaladion joined the Imperium. In the aftermath, the lost forges and fortress-citadels were quickly reclaimed and repaired by the now ruling Imperium-backed Mechanicum faction. Warship squadrons, now permanently based in the Incaladion System, gave the Forge World respite from attack for the first time and the vast mineral wealth and production capacity of the planet was quickly put into action to fuel the ever-expanding Great Crusade. Oaths of loyalty and debts of blood to the liberators were affirmed, although in this Mars and the Legio Mortis were judged by the Incaladine Mechanicum to be their saviours, rather than the IV Legion who had expended so many lives in the war. As a key part of repaying this debt, the Legio Fureans was quickly reconstituted and rearmed, with the deep Titan-forges beneath the planet's surface put to continuous operations to fuel a second birth for the Titan Legion. Travelling beyond Incaladion, the Legio Fureans pursued conflict with an aggressive fervour and tempo of battle seldom matched by any other Titan Legion of the period, splitting their forces into demi-legios and strike groups operating alongside numerous Imperial Expeditionary Fleets and extermination forces. Throughout this period, aside from an abiding alliance with the Legio Mortis, the Legio cultivated neither friendship nor overt feud with the rest of the Collegia Titanica, many of which came to regard them nevertheless as unpredictable and primitivistic. Feeding into this reputation, the Tiger Eyes were well-reputed for their disdain of sustained bombardment or other "stand-off tactics", preferring instead mobile, close-range fire-fights, melee combat, rapid flanking attacks and, when confronting superior forces, hit-and-run tactics carried out at the very limits of the reactor capacity of their Titans to maintain. It is said that some Tiger Eyes Princeps were willing to disengage or reduce their Void Shields in order to gain extra speed to employ these tactics; something that would be complete anathema to the standard practices of the Collegia Titanica. One demonstration of this willingness to do battle in any theatre by the Legio Fureans was that they allowed even single Titans and their support groups to be split from their central command and attached for periods of solo deployment, an action that many Titan Legions would simply not have countenanced. This wide-ranging deployment pattern and the generations of warfare on Incaladion made the Legio Fureans one of the most battle-hardened and adaptable of the Titan Legions and contributed to their enviable reputation. However, willingness to do battle, even against staggering odds, and willingness to follow orders from outside the Mechanicum or indeed to follow ordained strategies, proved not to be one and the same as far as the Tiger Eyes were concerned, as many theatre-commanders found to their dismay. Rumours also ran rife of strange pre-and post-battle rituals conducted by their Titan Princeps and their crews -- like some macabre mixture of Omnissian machine-rites and the savage totemic rituals of a feral animal cult. But given the invaluable battlefield work of the Tiger Eyes and the rank unfamiliarity of most observers with the inner workings of the Mechanicum, many such rumours were dismissed or deliberately ignored. When the wars of the Horus Heresy broke out, it was revealed immediately that the Legio Fureans had sided with the Warmaster Horus, as did both the Fabricator-General of Mars and the Legio Mortis. It is clear in hindsight in fact that the Legio knew of the planned treachery beforehand and were a key and willing part of the Warmaster's early battle plans and deployments from the start, such as the dispatch of a demi-legio of the Tiger Eyes to the Paramar assault force before blood had yet been spilt on Istvaan V. Quickly too would the darker rites of the Legion blossom into the twisted arcana of what would become known as the Dark Mechanicum in later years. Incaladion conversely, through declaring for the Traitors' cause fell quickly into a bloody civil war of its own, the absence of the Legio having stripped its new Preceptor-General's principal agency of overmatching power against his rivals. Notable Campaigns *'Lament of Shedim (Unknown Date.M31)' - This was an Imperial Compliance action carried out against the Aeldari upon the arid world of Anark Zeta between the forces of Craftworld Mór-ríoh'i and the Imperial forces of the Great Crusade, which included detachments from no fewer than four Titan Legions: the Legio Mortis, Legio Fureans, the Legio Atarus and the Legio Osedax. Overall command fell to Horus Lupercal, most-favoured son of the Emperor and Primarch of the Luna Wolves Legion. During the apocalyptic battle, the Legio Atarus was cruelly used, and without their foreknowledge, they were sent to probe the enemy lines of the Eldar, and were subsequently destroyed. The grievous losses suffered by the Firebrands due to the Legio Mortis and the Legio Fureans ' refusal to fight alongside them due to internal Mechanicum politics, was a grievous injury not soon forgotten. against the Legio Gryphonicus and the Loyalist Iron Warriors 77th Grand Company]] *'First Battle of Paramar (006.M31)' - The world of Paramar V was the scene of an invasion and overthrow of the Paramar System by the Traitor Alpha Legion and the forces of the Warmaster Horus during the opening days of the Horus Heresy. Lying at the outer northern edge of the Segmentum Solar, Paramar V was a vital staging post and supply terminus for Imperial Expeditionary Fleets, vital to the outward expansion of the Great Crusade. Paramar lies in almost direct conjunction between the Istvaan System and Terra. Before even the blood spilled in such great effusion in the Drop Site Massacre of Istvaan V had cooled, Horus' generals viewed Paramar V and the vast stockpiles of military supplies cached there with covetous eyes, and drew their plans against it. With typical guile and subterfuge, the Alpha Legion launched a massive assault, following in their wake came a second armada of Dark Mechanicum barques and mass-arks drawn from forces loyal to Horus, including the Titans of the Legio Fureans. The world of Paramar was the scene of several fierce battles during the Horus Heresy, amongst which the Traitor assault on Landing Zone Secundus of the Paramar Nexus was perhaps the most bloody. The Forces of Chaos, supported by a Sub-legion of 8-10 maniples of Tiger Eyes Traitor Titans of various classes, strode into the deserted spaceport expecting little resistance. They were surprised to meet Titans of the Legio Gryphonicus, along with support troops and armour from the Mechanicum and Loyalist forces from the Iron Warriors' 77th Grand Company. The speed and overwhelming force of the Alpha Legion's attack took its toll and the battle quickly swung full force in the Traitors' favour. Against the massed firepower of the Tiger Eyes Titans, the final Loyalist base known as Terminus could not stand. The Paramar Nexus fell and with it Paramar V belonged to Horus, its stockpiles and industry intact. *'The Second Battle of Paramar V (011.M31)' - Paramar V having fallen to the Warmaster Horus' hosts in the opening moves of the Horus Heresy, a mixed force of Loyalists launched an assault against the strategically vital supply nexus with the intent of denying it to the Traitors' war efforts. The Traitors numbered a substantial combined force of Legio Fureans and Legio Mortis god-engines that were in the system re-arming and re-supplying after several years of intensive campaigning, and a large presence of Sons of Horus and Word Bearers. The Loyalists committed a large Titan force drawn from the Legio Atarus, Legio Ignatum and Legio Solaria, with ground assault units of the Blood Angels and White Scars Legions. The Loyalists conducted a series of diversionary attacks across the Paramar System in order to draw forces away from their true target, before conducting a full-scale planetary assault against Paramar V's primary spaceport, capturing it intact and then pressing outwards to begin the destruction of the mass-provender silos sprawling across the plateau beyond. It was soon revealed that the Traitors had seen through the ploy and prepared a large counterattack. Though they inflicted heavy damage on the provender silos before the counterattack hit home, the vast majority of the Loyalist invasion force was surrounded and destroyed without mercy. *'Battle of Beta-Garmon, "The Titandeath" (006-013.M31)' - The Legio Fureans took part in the long and savage Beta-Garmon campaign, which included hundreds of war zones across dozens of worlds. Even before the greater armies of the Warmaster Horus reached the star cluster, the battle lines had long since been drawn, and fighting had been going on for many Terran years. It was a cauldron of battle that would consume millions of lives before its end and see the demise of entire Titan Legions, earning this campaign the dire moniker of the "Titandeath." The Beta-Garmon Cluster, also known as the gateway to the throneworld of Terra, was the last hurdle that the Warmaster Horus' forces had to overcome before they reached the Imperium's capital world. Heavily fortified by the Loyalists, Beta-Garmon would become one of the greatest and bloodiest battles of the Horus Heresy, as well as one of the longest-lasting. During the Battle of Beta-Garmon, the Legio Fureans was supported by the Knights of House Ærthegn, House Hyboras, House Perdaxia and House Rajha. **'On the Edge of the Void (286.013.M31)' - A Loyalist fleet attacked the shipyards at Theta-Garmon V, the the Legio Atarus leading the ground assault. Titans fought across the skin of the orbital shipyards as ships battled above their heads. Though the initial Loyalist assault captured key fortress docks, the Dark Mechanicum triggered a solar event that bombarded the gas giant and blinded the unprepared Loyalist Titans and voidcraft. Legio Fureans Titans inflicted a heavy toll upon the Legio Atarus and their allies, though the blinded Titans fought on bravely to the end. **'The Titandeath (356.013.M31)' - More than twenty Legions and hundreds of Titans converged on Beta-Garmon II as the Loyalists sought to strike a decisive blow to reclaim Nycron City and clear the system of Traitors. Shoulder to shoulder, the Loyalists met their enemies in battle like infantry formations facing off, only on a much grander scale, Knight banners racing around their feet like hunting hounds. Many Titan Legions were extinguished forever in the solar day of battle that followed, and even legendary formations such as the Legio Astorum and Legio Fureans were reduced to a fraction of their initial size. By the time the Loyalists reached the shattered walls of Nycron, both sides were staggering over fields of fallen god-machines, while the light from Beta-Garmon II's burning hive cities was visible in space. **'The Needle Breaks (788.013.M31)' - The tipping point of the Beta-Garmon campaign came in the shadow of the Cathega Telepathica on Beta-Garmon III, its Astropaths still psychically screaming out for aid from Terra. Having deployed the bulk of the Loyalist forces against the defences of Caldera Hive, only a handful of Loyalist Titans drawn from different Legions defended the Diviner's Needle along with their Knight allies, among them the Legio Atarus, Legio Defensor, Legio Astorum and Legio Solaria -- some reduced to a single maniple of undamaged war machines. Unbroken by solar months of fighting, the Legio Mortis led a massive host of Traitor Legions against the tower's defences, the Titans and Renegade Knights marching up through the toxic storm to battle on the mountain top, and ultimately bring the spire down. As it fell, a psychic scream reached out across the cluster and beyond, spreading dismay and horror to all Loyalists it reached. Though the fighting at Beta-Garmon would continue until Horus stood at the gates of Terra, and long after, history recorded this as the point when the fate of the cluster was sealed, and the Warmaster's armies began their final march toward the heart of the Imperium. *'Scouring of the Ollanz System (Unknown Date.M31)' - Titans of the Tiger Eyes Legion along with a force of the Emperor's Children Chaos Space Marines attempted to fend off an assault made by Legio Astorum Titans supported by three companies of the Iron Hands Space Marines. *'Battle of Balthor Sigma (Unknown Date.M31)' - The Tiger Eyes Traitor Titan Legion battled against the Firebrands Titan Legion and the Aeldari Titans of the Fir Iolarion clan of the Craftworld Lugganath. *'Battle of Nicomedua (Unknown Date.M42)' - Nicomedua was a tributary planet of the Adeptus Mechanicus whose ruling Tech-priests were corrupted by agents of the Dark Mechanicus after the opening of the Great Rift. War broke out on the world as the Imperium sought to reclaim it. The Legio Fureans was among the forces that served alongside the Dark Mechanicus troops during the war. After many standard years of fighting between the Hereteks and regiments of the Astra Militarum, a stalemate had developed. It was finally broken by a battlegroup of Titans from the Legio Metalica that was led by the ''Imperator''-class Titan Cassus Belli. The massive Titan quickly broke the Traitors' resistance and the tide of the conflict turned inevitably in the favour of the Imperium. Legion Strength Divisio Militaris records extant for the latter years of the Great Crusade rated the Legio Fureans as a fully operational Titan Legion of the second rank. The Legio was rated with an estimated 110-140 god-machines in active service at the time of the outbreak of the Horus Heresy. However, this may have underestimated the number of Titans in service with the Legio, which may have ranked as high as 170 various classes and types. The principal strength of the Tiger Eyes was split between two divergent classes: the Mars Pattern Warlord and the Mars Pattern Warhound, both of which, given sufficient time and resource, the Titan-forges of Incaladion were capable of independently producing. The Titan engines of the Legio Fureans, perhaps because of the unique arts of the Magi of Incaladion, were always regarded as possessing strangely bestial Machine Spirits, alien from those of other Legios, but still within the sanctified rites of the Mechanicum. During the later Great Crusade, the mid-range Battle Titans such as the Reaver and Carnivore were added in small numbers to expand the Legio 's order of battle and strategic reach while it was also known to favour the use of an idiosyncratic light-intermediate sub-pattern developed locally on Incaladion known as the Reviler. This pattern was designed to operate principally as a mobile Inferno Cannon platform and replaced the use of the heavier Knight classes in the Legion's core of retainers. In terms of the heaviest Titan units, it is not believed the Legio Fureans possessed any ''Imperator''-class Titans or their analogues, although it did utilise at least five adapted "Deathbringer" Warlords, which served as the Legio 's heaviest assault units. Notable Titans *''Alfaer Vyr'' - A Mars Pattern ''Warlord''-class Titan active during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras. *''Altair Fajar'' - A Mars Pattern Warlord-class Titan active during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras. *''Cyra Jal'' - A Mars Pattern Warlord-class Titan active during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras. *''Lyakarri'' - Lyakarri was a Warlord-class Titan active during the Great Crusade and opening days of the Horus Heresy. Destroyed during the First Battle of Paramar. *''Leyaka Rakis'' - A Mars Pattern ''Reaver''-class Titan active during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras. *''Leyaka Varr'' - A Mars Pattern Reaver-class Titan active during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras. *''Blood Hunger'' - A Mars Pattern ''Warhound''-class Titan active during the Great Crusade and opening days of the Horus Heresy. The Blood Hunger was destroyed during the First Battle of Paramar. *''Caedus Ferox'' - A Mars Pattern Warhound-class Titan active during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras at the First Battle of Paramar and after the Heresy at the Third Aratean Incursion in 565.M40. *''Dahk Cynal'' - A Mars Pattern Warhound-class Titan active during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras. *''Iben Faruk'' - A Mars Pattern Warhound-class Titan active during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras. *''Khara'' - A Mars Pattern Warhound-class Titan active during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras. *''Maeraka Hazn'' - A Mars Pattern Warhound-class Titan active during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras. *''Myphrit Hakim'' - A Mars Pattern Warhound-class Titan active during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras. *''Rahu'' - A Mars Pattern Warhound-class Titan active during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras. Notable Personnel *'Blood Princeps Nistru' - Nistru was a commander of Legio Fureans Sub-Legio during the First Battle of Paramar. *'Princeps Majoris Anjana' - Anjana was the Princeps Majoris and the pilot of the Reaver-class Titan Leyaka Varr, as well as the commander of War Maniple IX during the First Battle of Paramar V. Legion Appearance Legion Colours The colours of the Tiger Eyes Legion are orange and black, and their Titans are often decorated with black flames. Legion Badge The Tiger Eyes Legion badge is a tiger's eye with an orange iris and eyeball, centered on an orange lozenge, on top of a decorative circle, located within the cog symbol of the Opus Machina, on a field of black. Sources *''Adeptus Titanicus'' (1st Edition), pg. 32 *''Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah'' (Novel) by Gav Thorpe *''Imperial Armour Volume Thirteen - War Machines of the Lost and the Damned'' by Andy Hoare, pg. 144 *''The Horus Heresy - Book Two: Massacre'' (Forge World Series), by Alan Bligh, pg. 157 *''The Horus Heresy - Book Three: Extermination'' (Forge World Series), by Alan Bligh, pp. 28-30, 154-159 *''Adeptus Titanicus - The Horus Heresy: Rulebook'' (Specialty Game), pp. 14, 16-17 *''Adeptus Titanicus - The Horus Heresy: Titandeath'' (Specialty Game), pp. 50-54, 95 *''White Dwarf'' 111 (UK), "Adeptus Titanicus", pg. 56 *''White Dwarf'' 110 (UK), "Adeptus Titanicus: Eldar", pg. 67 *''White Dwarf'' 109 (UK), "Adeptus Titanicus", pp. 14-15 Gallery File:Tiger_Eyes_Chaos_Titan_Legion_Icon.jpg|Tiger Eyes Legio Iconography (Rogue Trader Era) Tiger Eyes_Honour Banner.jpg|Tiger Eyes Legion Princeps Honour Banner (Rogue Trader Era ) Tiger Eyes_Kill Banner3.jpg|Tiger Eyes Legio Moderatus Kill Banner (Rogue Trader Era ) File:Legio_Fureans_Princeps_Banner.jpg|Banner of Princeps Majoris Anjana, of the Reaver-class Titan, Leyaka Varr File:Legio_Fureans_Kill_Banner.jpg|Kill banner of Reaver-class Titan Leyaka Varr, Melta Cannon Legio Fureans_Warlord.jpg|''Legio Fureans'' ''Warlord''-class Titan. Legio Fureans Warbringer Nemesis Titan.jpg|''Legio Fureans'' ''Warbringer Nemesis''-class Titan. Legio Fureans_Warhound Khara.jpg|''Legio Fureans'' ''Warhound''-class Titan, Khara Legio Fureans Warhound Rahu.jpg|''Legio Fureans'' ''Warhound''-class Titan, Rahu File:Legio_Fureans_Warhounds_Paramar_V.jpg|''Legio Fureans'' ''Warhound''-class Scout Titans supporting an assault by Traitor Space Marines during the Horus Heresy File:Legio_Fureans_AL_Paramar_V.jpg|''Legio Fureans'' Traitor Titans supporting an Alpha Legion armoured column during the First Battle of Paramar File:Legio_Fureans_AL_Paramar_V_2.jpg|''Legio Fureans'' Traitor Titans supporting the Alpha Legion during the First Battle of Paramar Caedus Ferox_Warhound.png|A Chaos-corrupted ''Warhound''-class Titan, Caedus Ferox, ca. 565.M40, during the Third Aratean Incursion; note that this Titan bears heraldry clearly debased from that of the Legio Fureans of old; this ancient war machine was present during the First Battle of Paramar File:Tiger_Eyes_Reaver.jpg|Tiger Eyes ''Reaver''-class Titan (Rogue Trader Era ) Tiger_Eyes_Group.jpg|Tiger Eyes Legion Titans supporting an Emperor's Children armoured column (Rogue Trader Era) ES:Ojos de Tigre Category:T Category:Chaos Category:Chaos Walkers Category:Dark Mechanicus Category:Traitor Titan Legions Category:Walkers